string joke (Washington Sq. Park)

I don't remember where I first heard this joke but I was a teenager, and I remember thinking the punch line was incredibly clever and just damn funny. For decades (decades!) whenever the moment to tell a joke rolled around I groped to put together the pieces of this one but could only remember the punch line. I knew there were pieces of rope walking into a bar and somehow one of them gets twisted into a knot and the hair is frizzy and— then it just became a hazy, jokey, foggy haze. So as soon as this woman began I got so excited a bit of pee leaked out. "This is it!" I thought, "I have stumbled upon the end of a long and significant chapter in my joke life..." Or something like that. When it was over, I made a mental note that the ropes are all trying to get a by-the-book bartender to serve them some booze. I turned off the camera, dabbed the pee-spot with a tissue, and— somehow sure the sunlight was making me look really cool— went off to find another someone who wouldn't mind telling us a joke.